Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Playing the Long Game

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor in Chief

A chess set overexposed in pink, purple, and blue hues

What if the most radical act today is not to react, but to pause?

Chess is not just a game. It is an ancient philosophy of attention—a way I first learned to analyze the world from my father, who taught me to play as a young child. We’d sit together on the living room floor with a board and a beautifully carved chess set between us, as he guided me through the moves and the stories of each piece. Over the years, he used the game as a metaphor for life: patience, strategy, and the understanding that not every threat needs an immediate response. I stepped away from the game for many years but returned in 2016, when it proved to be an excellent anxiety reducer during the particular politics of that year. When the world feels like it’s moving too fast, I still turn to the board. It reminds me that wisdom often lies in the pause rather than the rush.

It asks for patience, wisdom, and the ability to think beyond the immediate move. The game rewards restraint, foresight, and the understanding that not every threat needs an immediate response; that the dramatic move is not always the wise one.

Lately, I have been reflecting on the discipline required to “play the long game” in both my own life and the world around us at this moment. We live in a time that rewards reaction: outrage is immediate, drama permeates the air in real time, and power is often performed through impulsiveness rather than judgment. But force without thoughtful strategy is not mastery; it is instability, chaos, and the erosion of our own judgment.

That feels especially true now. As war escalates between the United States, Israel, and Iran, and as political life in the U.S. continues to be shaped by bluster, performance, and short-term domination, it is hard not to notice the absence of genuine discipline on the global board. There is an added irony in watching Trump threaten to strike Iran “extremely hard” and send it “back to the Stone Ages” while appearing, once again, to misread the strategy of the very regime he claims to be overpowering. The lesson is clear: intelligence and power are not the same thing, and finesse—in politics as in life—is rarer than it should be.

At The 44 North, we are interested in something quieter yet more demanding: thoughtful attention, moral seriousness, and the long view. This issue reflects that commitment in different ways – from questions of gender and power to stories about surveillance, selfhood, and control. Again and again, the pieces in this issue ask what it means to remain clear-sighted in systems that would rather make us reactive, doubtful, or numb.

You’ll find that spirit in our review of Inter Alia, Suzie Miller’s play about the slow, cumulative violences that can unsettle even the most accomplished women in male-dominated spaces. You’ll find it in our latest Artist Spotlight featuring Capsule Community, and in this issue’s Writer’s Room selection, “On the OSAP Cuts: Could We Have Stratified the Cold?” You’ll find it, too, in the second- and third-place winners of our essay contest, which examine surveillance, optimization culture, and the erosion of inherent worth with urgency and intelligence.

This issue also includes Andrea Gibson’s powerful poem: “In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don’t lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down.” Its title feels like its own kind of opening move: vulnerable, precise, and brave.

On the political side, we are pleased to feature work from Sylphia Basak and Cole Martin, whose pieces explore public anxieties around artificial intelligence and the geopolitical stakes of the Strait of Hormuz. More broadly, this issue also marks an exciting next step for The 44 North: the addition of a new team of political writers, including Basak and Martin, who will be contributing analysis and commentary between issues. At a time when public discourse is often flattened by speed, certainty, and outrage, we are proud to be making more space for political writing that is thoughtful, independent, and unafraid of complexity.

We are also happy to share that our newsletter has officially moved to Substack and is reborn as Points North: a place for field notes on culture, politics, and the world around us, alongside updates on our latest issue, podcast episodes, events, contests, and more. We hope you’ll join us there – not just to read, but to reflect, to question, and to play your own long game.

If chess teaches us anything worth carrying into daily life, it is this: patience is not weakness. Restraint is not retreat. To pause, to think carefully, to resist manipulation by headlines and noise—these are not acts of passivity, but of discipline. They are how we protect our judgment. And with it, our humanity.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Who is Seen, Who is Heard, and What Happens When the Truth is Obscured

by Gillian Smith-Clark ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

“Tell the Truth” stamped on pavement in white capital letters

This February/March issue of The 44 North is, at its core, about visibility: who is seen, who is heard, and what happens when the truth is obscured: by power, by indifference, or by deliberate misinformation.

Across these pages, you’ll find work that grapples with Black history and resistance, the freedom to read, women’s and girls’ safety, sexual and reproductive health, homelessness, and the quiet, daily ways communities hold one another together when institutions fail them. These themes may appear distinct, but they are bound by a single throughline: access. Access to knowledge, to care, to dignity, and to platforms that refuse to look away.

That tension feels especially sharp right now. In recent weeks, more than 300 journalists were purged from The Washington Post—a decision that lays bare how vulnerable even legacy newsrooms are when journalistic missions collide with corporate ownership. The paper’s slogan, Democracy Dies in Darkness—introduced in 2017 and greeted at the time with both praise and pointed skepticism—now reads less like branding and more like an unintended indictment. What does that phrase mean when an iconic publication is hollowed out by fear and corporate priorities, and when media power increasingly determines which stories survive, and which disappear?

This issue is our response to that question.

Independent media matters not because it is perfect, but because it is accountable. Because it asks uncomfortable questions. Because it makes room for more voices—especially young and marginalized voices—that are too often dismissed, underestimated, or filtered through institutions that no longer serve them. At The 44 North, we remain committed to publishing work that is courageous, ethical, and grounded in empathy, including, and more specifically, when doing so is inconvenient.

You’ll see that commitment reflected throughout this issue. Our review of All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews explores grief, agency, and the limits of language when pain resists resolution. In our Artist Spotlight, Feels Zine offers a bold and tender exploration of queer sex and romance, reminding us that intimacy itself can be an act of reclamation. Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Rosa Parks,” featured in Poet’s Corner, anchors Black history not in abstraction, but in lived courage.

Several pieces examine storytelling as both a mirror and an intervention. Our feature on libraries as vital “third spaces,” including Dear TPL: The Passport Project, highlights how access to books and community resources can quite literally expand lives. “Novel Idea: How Fiction Helps Us See Ourselves” reflects on reading as self-recognition and survival. In The Writer’s Room, “ICE Murders: Lives in Slow Motion” uses current-events-based fiction to confront state violence in ways conventional reporting often cannot.

This issue also includes my own essay, “Watching Minneapolis from Canada: When Power Stops Explaining Itself,” which wrestles with proximity, responsibility, and what it means to witness injustice across borders in an era of relentless images and insufficient accountability.

At the heart of this issue is the winning essay from our inaugural essay contest: “The Pathogen of Perception: Quantifying the Multi-Dimensional Cost of Medical Misinformation” by Jason Wang.

Wang’s essay embodies everything we hoped this contest would epitomize: thoughtful analysis, moral seriousness, originality, and something more: a refusal to treat misinformation as a harmless difference of opinion. “Misinformation is not a victimless exchange of ideas,” Wang writes, tracing how falsehoods about vaccines during the global pandemic translated into preventable deaths—often borne not by those who rejected care, but by infants, immunocompromised patients, and those who never consented to the risks imposed upon them.

What makes this essay especially powerful is its insistence that the solution is not censorship, but literacy: scientific, media, and civic. “The answer is not censorship,” Wang argues. “It is teaching people how to think critically about health information the same way we teach them to read or do algebra.”  In a moment defined by fragmentation and distrust, this is a call not for control, but for collective capacity.

What happens to a society when it loses the ability to respond to shared threats? When truth is drowned out by noise, and institutions designed to inform either retreat or collapse?

This issue is our answer: we build capacity by telling the truth carefully. By amplifying young thinkers who understand the stakes because they have lived them. By defending the freedom to read, to question, to imagine, and to care for one another beyond narrow definitions of individual choice.

If we take the Post’s motto at its word and accept that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” it is worth remembering that darkness thrives in silence and isolation. It recedes when we insist on seeing the world as it is, clearly—and when we choose, together, to keep the lights on.

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Holding Multiple Truths

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

Pine boughs decorated with small yellow lights

As the year turns, we’re invited into a season that often arrives wrapped in a package of expectation: celebration, connection, spiritual renewal, reflection. Yet the holidays also hold multiple truths at once, and for many, the season arrives with more complexity than cheer—distance from family, uncertainty about the future, unresolved conflicts, and more questions about spirituality and religion than answers; alongside the not-so subtle pressure to reinvent ourselves on January 1st. This December/January issue of The 44 North looks at the holidays with honesty and curiosity, and joy and hope. Not because everything feels okay, but because to find joy and peace in the holiday season, it is not only possible, but necessary, to hold multiple truths at once. To see the world as it is: in all its beautiful messiness. 

This issue, our team explores the realities that shape our well-being at this time of year. Our feature story by Abbigale Kernya examines what it means to spend the holidays away from home—whether by choice, circumstance, or necessity—and how distance reshapes belonging. Abbigale and Helena together take on the pressures of New Year’s resolutions and career planning, challenging the embedded assumption that success and happiness in life can be scheduled like a process, or a destination at which we eventually arrive. The latest Life Outside the Box podcast episode is a powerful and inspiring conversation with Cal Campos, focused on questioning the systems we’re in and having honest conversations about suicide.

We’re also excited to share this issue’s Artist Spotlight, featuring Extended Mic, a community-rooted platform showcasing diverse young creators pushing the boundaries of film and poetry. And in our Book Review, we take a closer look at John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis—a deeply human, vulnerable reflection on illness, interconnectedness, and what it means to care for one another in a fragile and inequitable world.

We are honoured to publish a powerful work by Rohit Doel, whose poem and essay on disability justice push us to listen more deeply, to expand our definition of community care. Our Poet’s Corner highlights Terrance Hayes’ “The Same City,” and Mikaela Brewer brings us into the world of social support with a short story about calling 211, asking what trust in community looks like when it’s tested. Plus, we offer a collaborative gift guide from our team—because hope and joy can also taste like a good meal, or arrive as a small, thoughtful gesture.

Lastly, we're excited to be offering our very first essay contest. If you're hoping to submit over the holidays before our January 6th deadline, check out the recording and resource packet from our writing workshop, here.

As we close out another year, we’re not chasing perfection. We’re choosing presence: with ourselves, with each other, and with the complicated realities shaping our world. Whether your holidays are joyful, heavy, chaotic, beautifully quiet, or even all those things at different points, we’re grateful to be there with you on your journey.

Here’s to truth, peace, and possibility!

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media